1750-1900 Empires In Collision 🎎

By: Khamari Brooks

1750-1900 Empires In Collision 🎎

By: Khamari Brooks

Taiping Rebellion 1850-1864

The most destructive civil war in China before the twentieth century. A Christian-inspired rural rebellion threatened to topple the Qing Empire. Leader claimed to be the brother of Jesus. It was caused due to the peasants opposing the dynasty's Manchu origins .

Opium Wars 1838-1858

War between Britain and the Qing Empire that was, in the British view, occasioned by the Qing government's refusal to permit the importation of opium into its territories. The victorious British imposed the one-sided Treaty of Nanking on China.It humiliated the Chinese (who still considered themselves a great and powerful empire), and was a clear example that China could be pushed around by distant foreign powers.

Unequal Treaties

The First Opium War began, which Britian's industrialized military might proved decisive. The Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the war in 1842, largely on British terms, imposed numerous restrictions on Chinese sovereignty and opened five ports to European traders. This agreement was known as the first of the "unequal treaties".

Self Strengthening Movement

This movement was made to reinvigorate a traditional China while borrowing cautiously from the west in the 1860s and 1870s. A few industrial factories producing textiles and steel were established, coal mines were expanded, and a telegraph system was initiated.

Boxer Uprising 1898-1901

The Boxer Uprising was an anti foreign movement that erupted in northern China. It was led by militia organizations calling themselves the Society of of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, the "Boxers" killed numerous Europeans and Chinese Christians and laid siege to the foreign embassies in Beijing. The direct outcome was the end of the Qing Dynasty and therefore of the imperial system and Manchu rule in China, which was humiliated by the treaties it had to sign as a result of the failure of the Boxers.Within a few years, a strong Nationalist movement would depose the last emperor, with western approval, and establish rule by ethnic Chinese (the Manchus were ethnically Mongolian).

Commissioner Lin 🖖🏾

When the Chinese emperor decided in 1838 to suppress the opium trade, he selected Lin Zexu to enforce the policy. He had the reputation as a strict and honest official, immune to bribery, genuinely concerned with the welfare of the peasantry, and unafraid to confront the corruption and decadence of rich and poor alike. But by 1839, he had confiscated some 50,000 pounds of the drug (opium) together with over 70,000 pipes and arressted some 1,700 dealers

Chinese Revolution of 1911

The Chinese Revolution, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty, and established the Republic of China. The 1911 Revolution was a great victory because it overthrew the Qing Dynasty, ended the autocratic monarchy that had ruled China for more than 2,000 years and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The 1911 Revolution not only put an end to the monarchy of China but also greatly promoted democracy among the Chinese people, thereby contributing much to the country's transition from a monarchy to a republic as well as its political modernization.

"The Sick Man of Europe"

The Ottoman Empire in 1914 was commonly known as 'the sick man of Europe', a sign that the once-great power was crumbling. The Turks had dominated the Eastern Mediterranean for half a millennium, controlling vast swathes of Central Europe, Arab lands as far down as Egypt and had at one stage been knocking on the doors of Vienna and Venice. By the 20th century all that remained in Ottoman hands outside Turkey was Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

Tanzimat

The tanzimat were a series of reforms in the Ottoman Empire that brought the culture, education, religion and society more in line with Europe and the United States and western ways.

Young Ottomans

The YoungOttomans were a secret society established in 1865 by a group of Ottoman Turkish intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire, which they believed did not go far enough.

Sultan Abd al-Hamid II

In 1876, the Young Ottomans experienced a short lived victory when the Sultan Abd al-Hamid II accepted a constitution and an elected parliament, but not for long. Under the pressure of war with Russia, the Sultan soon suspended the reforms and reverted to an older style of despotic rule for the next 30 years, even renewing the claim that he was the caliph, successor of the prophet, and the protector of Muslims everywhere.

Young Turks

The Young Turks was a political reform movement in the early 20th century, favoring replacement of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire with a constitutional monarchy . Later, their leaders led a rebellion against the absolute rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution . With this revolution, the Young Turks helped to establish the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, ushering in an era of multi-party democracy for the first time in the country’s history.

Informal Empires

China and the Ottoman Empire became informal empires. Informal Empire describes the spheres of influence which an empire may develop that translate into a degree of influence over a region or country, which is not a formal colony in the empire, as a result of the extension of commercial, strategic or military interests of the empire.

Tokugawa, Japan

During the 1500s, power was decentralized in Japan, which was torn apart by warfare between competing feudal lords (daimyo) for nearly a century. Following his victory in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, however, Tokugawa (1543-1616) swiftly consolidated power from his heavily fortified castle at Edo (now Tokyo). The prestigious but largely powerless imperial court named Ieyasu as shogun (or supreme military leader) in 1603, beginning a dynasty that would rule Japan for the next two-and-a-half centuries.

Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration also known as the Meiji Ishin, Renovation, Revolution, Reform, or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under EmperorMeiji.The Meiji Restoration was significant because it shifted political power from the shogun to the emperor, a shift which helped Japan modernize swiftly. This swift modernization allowed Japan to become an economic and military rival of the Western colonial powers.

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea.